Bucking the Korean pop culture wave in this region, Japanese actor Shohei Miura held a public fan meet here last Saturday to great response.

Hundreds of eager fans - mostly women in their 20s - crowded the atrium at Clarke Quay Central mall for hours before the 28-year-old was due to appear, in hopes of snagging the best spots to glimpse him from.

He was here to promote his hit drama series Please Love Me!, an adaptation of a popular ongoing manga series by Aya Nakahara in which he plays a man embroiled in a love triangle with a 30-year-old woman (played by Kyoko Fukada) and her new employer (Dean Fujioka).

As soon as he showed up onstage in a dapper suit at 5.30pm, the fans' incessant screaming began.

Rising to the occasion, the charismatic bachelor was on a charm offensive, saying and doing all the right idol-type things to please his smitten fans.

He kicked off proceedings answering a series of questions in a mix of Japanese and English, delighting the Singaporeans in the audience by naming all the local foods he had consumed on his various trips here, such as chicken rice and chili crab.

"I love things spicy," he said in English.

One fan yelled out for him to visit Tampines on his next trip here - presumably where she lived - to which he gamely said with a laugh, "Okay." When he got word that there were fans in the audience who had come from China, he spouted near-perfect Mandarin to introduce himself: "Hello everybody, I am Shohei Miura."

After the question-and-answer session, he re-enacted two romantic scenes from his TV series with fans who were handpicked from the crowd.

In the first scene, he moved his face very close towards the woman as if he was about to kiss her, only to use his finger to wipe off a ketchup smudge from her neck.

The fangirl who was picked to play the leading lady in this segment - she looked to be in her 20s - was so overwhelmed with excitement that she was rendered completely speechless and covered her mouth the entire time.

The second scene featured a cute marriage proposal that was only made cuter when the emcee picked a young girl who looked to be about 11 years old to re-enact it opposite Miura.

Although bemused by the situation she found herself in, she quietly said "Yes" when Miura asked for her hand in marriage.

Given how smoothly he handled the fan meet, it was perhaps surprising that this was his first such event held outside Japan.

"I'm really glad that people outside of Japan have been watching my show and I hope that I can come back to Singapore to meet my fans here many more times," he said breezily in Japanese.

The fans, as was to be expected, responded with more shrieking.

•Follow Yip Wai Yee on Twitter @STyipwaiyee

•Please Love Me! airs on Wakuwaku Japan (StarHub TV Channel 813) on Saturday at 9pm.